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Chinese poet, dissident, and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo died of acute liver cancer on Thursday, July 13, 2017 while in police custody. Liu Xiaobo’s wife, the noted poet and photographer Liu Xia, has been under extralegal house arrest since Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel prize. Liu Xia’s whereabouts are currently unknown. With her husband now dead, she has become de facto the most internationally recognized symbol of opposition to the oligarchy that rules mainland China. […]

The “citizen journalist” documentation of Lt. John Pike nonchalantly pepper-spraying seated protesters on the campus of the University of California-Davis on November 18 has gone viral not just in the west but in mainland China as well — with the blessings of the Chinese Communist Party. This raises the question of whether Pike is actually a covert operative for the CCP, deliberately overreacting to nonviolent protest in order to discredit the United States and strengthen the hands of totalitarian governments everywhere. […]